Basm
by DreadNot
Summary: A cautionary tale from Alucard to Walter about happy endings. AxW.


_This fic contains slash. It's also a downer. It was written in response to a picture drawn by Glass Bullet. It is also a submission for January's LiveJournal fictionhaven quote challenge and includes a direct quote from Princess Bride. Princess Bride belongs to S. Morgenstern; Hellsing belongs to Kohta Hirano. I make no claim to ownership of either.

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"I don't want to leave."

"Things change. Time passes. You will regret someday."

Walter pushed the hair out of his eyes and leaned up on an elbow to look at Alucard. "Then give me something good to regret. Otherwise I'll just regret leaving."

"Angel," Alucard said chidingly as he matched Walter's movements to bring them face to face. The young man looked enticing in his dishevelment, hair in his eyes, skin still flushed from their lovemaking. "You are not some little boy to believe a fairy tale that I will someday love you and make you mine."

"That doesn't mean that I have to leave. I know you like my company. Why can't I stay here with you tonight?"

"My chamber is not a fitting place for you. I have no comforts for humans."

"I am lying nude on the cold stone floor here. How many comforts do I really need? I'll put on my trousers, sit on the floor by your chair and you can pet me and tell me a fairy tale that I promise you I won't believe."

"Your stubbornness is not always charming."

"But it is right now," Walter said, smirking. He pushed Alucard over onto his back and draped his body over the vampire's to kiss him before reaching for his trousers where he had kicked them aside earlier.

"Admit it. You like having me around, even when I'm stubborn."

Alucard did not even consider lying about it; that was beneath him. "Yes, I like having you around, but I know better than you that things will change. Everything changes."

"Even you," Walter observed, standing to pull his clothes on.

"After a fashion, yes, even I change."

"Then stop acting as though change is always to the bad. I thought I was supposed to be the kid here and you would teach me your great wisdom gained through centuries as a vampire; instead, I'm the one telling you to stop looking toward the inevitability of loss."

Buttoning his trousers, he knelt next to Alucard, who had lain heedless of the cold stone floor watching him dress. "I'm going to get old and we probably won't be lovers anymore. Does it do either of us any good to give up _now_ when we have time _now?"_

Shadows rose from the floor and wrapped themselves around Alucard, solidifying into a luxurious-appearing robe complete with a fur trim collar. He took Walter's hand, and the two rose together.

"It will only make the ending that much harder to endure. I think of you when I try to keep you from getting too attached to me."

"Bollocks to that." The young man didn't look in the least amused or mollified by the thought. "If you're thinking of me then stop trying to ruin things while they're good. Bad will come soon enough." For Walter, that was a lesson learned in war, and one he thought he'd never forget.

He pulled Alucard over to his chair and waited for the vampire to sit before taking a place at his feet. He leaned his head back against Alucard's knees and smiled at him, upside-down. "Now tell me a fairy tale that you will someday love me and make me yours."

-

_Once upon a time, in a time not so far from now, in a country very nearby, there lived a young man who wanted to learn of life and death and love and hate._

_He was a deadly young man, who knew what it was to grasp life's pleasures. He lived every day as though it might be his last, taking joy in every moment, in every experience._

_That joy attracted a much older man who had forgotten what it was to take pleasure in every day, weighed down as he was by years of pains both given and received._

_He was drawn to the young man's light. He basked in it, warming his darkness with the reminders his companion brought him of younger, brighter days._

_For, although his lover was no innocent – a killer born and trained, the older man was worse by far – a genocide, a monster. Where others might have seen horrors, in each other they saw complementary souls._

_With time, they became sure they could not live without each other._

_"I don't want to leave," the young man said, and his lover said, "Stay."_

_And he stayed and warmed the older man with his light._

_And they were happy in life and in love._

_But there is no happily ever after._

_The older man cleaved to the light, taking it for himself. Not out of selfishness, but because it was his nature. His darkness called to his lover's light and swallowed it, making them one in the night._

_With time, the young man no longer smiled. With the light gone, living only in his lover's shadow, he lost his joy._

_He no longer lived his life as though any moment might be his last, that gift had been taken from him, replaced with a false life that stretched endlessly before him – not an adventure to be embraced and explored, but a burden to be carried and endured._

_Without his joy, his light, there was nothing to draw the two together._

_And they were unhappy in death and in hate._

_And there was no happily ever after. _

-

Only the movements of his throat as he swallowed his hurt gave away Walter's reaction to Alucard's story.

"That wasn't what you had in mind?" Alucard asked, his voice light, his hand playing teasingly through his young lover's hair. "You promised me you wouldn't believe it."

Walter rose in a smooth motion, his face set in angry lines. "You mock my pain!"

The vampire's face was closed to him; his words were cool and precise when he responded, "Life is pain, Angel. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

The door to Alucard's chamber swung open at a glance from the vampire.

"Go to your bed, Walter. Do not seek to come to mine; it is cold and hard, and the nights are longer than you can fathom."


End file.
